“The
acquisition of XenologiQ signals the start of Certara’s commitment to
become a world leader in the QSP space, furthering our objective of
providing technology solutions that improve all aspects of the drug
development process.”

“This transaction strengthens Certara’s modeling and simulation
capabilities, increases its leadership in mechanistic pharmacology, and
supports the company’s precision medicine vision,” said Certara Chief
Executive Officer Edmundo Muniz, M.D, Ph.D. “It also gives us access to
the emerging QSP technology, which integrates quantitative knowledge
about a compound with the understanding of the mechanism of action for a
specific disease. QSP focuses on the behavior of biological systems as a
whole, versus the behavior of individual components.”

The XenologiQ team will join Certara’s Simcyp® division. The directors
of XenoloqiQ will take up leadership positions within the Simcyp QSP
organization. Piet van der Graaf, PharmD, PhD, (currently professor of
systems pharmacology, Leiden University, Netherlands) will become vice
president QSP, and Neil Benson, PhD, (formerly head of systems
pharmacology, Pfizer, Sandwich, UK) will become head of QSP operations.
Professor van der Graaf is a global leader in QSP, holds several patents
in the field of target discovery, and has authored more than 100
scientific papers and book chapters in the area of quantitative and
translational pharmacology. He is also Editor-in-Chief of CPT:
Pharmacometrics & Systems Pharmacology, the American Society for
Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics’ journal.

Simcyp is the industry-leading mechanistic and physiologically-based
pharmacokinetic (PBPK) modeling organization and counts the majority of
the top-40 pharma companies as its clients and members of the Simcyp
Consortium. Key academic institutions, and global regulators, including
the US Food and Drug Administration, European Medicines Agency, and
Japanese Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency are consortium
affiliates.

QSP is an emerging biosimulation discipline that combines computational
modeling and experimental methods to examine the mechanistic
relationships between a drug, the biological system, and the disease
process. QSP integrates quantitative drug data with knowledge of the
drug’s mechanism of action. QSP modeling demonstrates, in a precise,
predictive manner, how drugs modify cellular networks in space and time
and how they impact and are impacted by human pathophysiology.
Additionally, QSP facilitates the evaluation of complex, heterogeneous
diseases such as cancer, immunological, metabolic and CNS diseases that
require the combination of multiple therapies.

“Certara’s move into QSP is a natural extension of its leading position
in biosimulation,” said Simcyp President Steve Toon, PhD. “The
acquisition of XenologiQ signals the start of Certara’s commitment to
become a world leader in the QSP space, furthering our objective of
providing technology solutions that improve all aspects of the drug
development process.”

“Combining PBPK with systems pharmacology is a natural fit. We see
systems pharmacology models evolving alongside PBPK ones as new data
becomes available to further inform crucial go/no-go decisions
throughout the drug development continuum,” said Professor van der
Graaf. “We look forward to joining Certara’s Simcyp team and increasing
the depth of human disease biology included in its biosimulation
modeling.”

Financial details about the transaction were not disclosed.

About XenologiQ

XenologiQ is a UK-based consulting company. Its mission is to
productively implement state-of-the-art modeling and simulation in
medical and life sciences research. Its value proposition is to achieve
this via the optimal integration of experience, technical excellence and
global talent. Its consultants have decades of experience in reducing
modeling and simulation to effective practice in blue chip
pharmaceutical R&D, in particular in pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic
modeling and applied systems biology/systems pharmacology. For further
information, visit www.xenologiq.com.

About Certara

Certara is a global biosimulation technology-enabled drug development
company. Its customers include hundreds of biopharmaceutical companies
around the globe, together with several regulatory agencies. Certara’s
solutions, which span the discovery, preclinical and clinical stages of
drug development, enable superior drug development and regulatory
decision-making through biosimulation, thus increasing R&D productivity
and commercial value. For more information, visit www.certara.com.